It's a Tragedy to see the Deadline's Over Post Trade Thread

[djFan71]

Acquiring another big that compliments rwIII or is better than him is next priority, has to feel like long term, no?

I'd love a tall, playmaking PG too. 2 spots from Hali still kills me.

[LarryBirdsFingr]

For all those wondering why people like @dangercart are claiming we are **** it's basically this:

If Fournier walks and tatum misses all nba we are less than 2 million below the tax next year for just twelve players.

So bringing back fournier as currently constituted is next to impossible unless you believe the c's are going 20 million into the tax. They are not.

So okay how do you fix that? You could dump kemba, but at roughly 75 million owed over two years that's an albatross. You are talking like two firsts just to move off the deal for the privilege of resigning fournier. You could dump tt but you'd need to replace him on the roster anyway since you need a decent backup due to robs health issues. You no longer have the financial flexibility via a large tpe to add a big wing which you still desperately need.

In short you are financially jammed up with no way out except to shed talent on a team that nobody thinks is good enough as is.

I don't see it the same at all. I'm not going to sit here and say our cap situation is "clean" or anything. But having avoided the tax this year and thus removed ANY AND ALL CONCERNS ABOUT REPEATER TAX RATES EVER KICKING IN BEFORE KEMBA'S DEAL EXPIRES, a point that I cannot stress enough, I do not see this big financial crunch.

NBA luxury tax is not crippling. Repeater tax rates are. We don't have to worry about that. I see no reason to believe that we're going to be pinching pennies in '21-22 or '22-23. Remember, in addition to the contracts we have on the books now, ownership was ok with Ainge offered Hayward a contract in the reported range of $25M/year before CHA came in over that. They were ok adding that much salary to the books we have now. Because a backloaded deal for Hayward would have still kept us below the tax line this year and thus removed any worry about repeater rates. Those have always been what's crippling, not regular tax. We are in the clear.

I just do not see significant financial crunch the next two years when it comes to adding role players. The issue is going to be if we want to trade for a star. Dipping below the cap to sign one outright is not practical when you crunch the numbers, even if Kemba had never been signed in the first place. The only path we have to acquiring another star is via trade and I just do not think we have the assets for that.

The writing is sort of on the wall in terms of our ability to add another star to the team as constitutes, or even without kemba.

[djFan71]

Again, you’re banking almost entirely on Langford or Nesmith turning into starting caliber players. Or, I guess, Grant turning into a scorer who can maneuver around larger players in the post. We have limited flexibility and limited upside.

Not really. You're definitely hoping one becomes a quality rotation player. But you have 7 starter quality already: Smart, Jays, Kemba, Fournier, TT, Rob.

If either of those 2 pan out to 25 mpg guy and PP does too, you're in solid shape. Big thing as always is we need our stars to turn out to be superstars.

Quality rotation players won’t make this roster significantly better - there has to be a path to upgrade the core. You can’t trade Nesmith for someone like John Collins.

And yeah, the other possibility is that Brown and Tatum might have major leaps left in their game. Tatum probably does. But they’re both developing horrible habits this season - hopefully they play better with better spacing.

I mean, it's really the only possibility. Adding Collins to them doesn't win us a title if they don't.
I get your point overall, obviously it would be great if both Romeo & Nesmith are super-duper valuable. But it's still always going to be about Tatum becoming a top 5 player, or we're screwed.

[Captain_Caveman]

New team:

Kemba/Pritchard/Waters
Jaylen/Smart/Langford/Edwards
Fournier/Nesmith/Ojeleye
Tatum/GWill/Wagner
RWill/Thompson/Kornet/Tacko

[Andrew McCeltic]

Masslive mentioned one other possibility, which is using the remaining $10 million TPE in a sign and trade for a free agent. Not much there - if you’re lucky you get Jamychal Green or Justise Winslow.

[zoyathedestroya]

TJ Warren out for the season. Pacers could probably use Hayward right about now lol.

SexPants getting waived by the Knicks. Do we have an open roster spot? Someone to keep Fournier company.

Substantial buyout by LMA.

[keevsnick1]

Play out this year, hope for the best, whatever. Nothing I've seen leaves me excited. But lookin ahead to this offseason where I expect Fournier to be re-signed with Bird Rights, the pieces I like and would like to keep...

Kemba (not giving up picks to move him) / Pritchard
Smart / Fournier
Brown / ???
Tatum / ???
??? / R Williams

That's the main 10 man rotation. I have 4 ??? spots. In order to fill those spots we have the following trade chips:

Nesmith
Langford
G Williams
Our 1st round pick
Future picks

The pure salary matching trade pieces are as follows:

Thompson's $9.7M expiring deal
$11.05M left on
$4.767M Kanter TPE
$5M Theis TPE

In free agency we will have the tax payer's MLE and the bi-annual exception to use, along with minimum salary deals of course. Bird rights on Semi as well, though I really hope he isn't re-signed unless it's 3rd string depth. Also bird rights on Wagner and early bird rights on Kornet should either emerge as worthy to re-sign as 3rd string depth or somehow break out into more the rest of the way here.

Ainge needs to be aggressive about finding the right players who fit the role and accept it. Doesn't necessarily have to be vets, but those are generally better bets to be good fits for that.

For all those wondering why people like @dangercart are claiming we are **** it's basically this:

If Fournier walks and tatum misses all nba we are less than 2 million below the tax next year for just twelve players.

So bringing back fournier as currently constituted is next to impossible unless you believe the c's are going 20 million into the tax. They are not.

So okay how do you fix that? You could dump kemba, but at roughly 75 million owed over two years that's an albatross. You are talking like two firsts just to move off the deal for the privilege of resigning fournier. You could dump tt but you'd need to replace him on the roster anyway since you need a decent backup due to robs health issues. You no longer have the financial flexibility via a large tpe to add a big wing which you still desperately need.

In short you are financially jammed up with no way out except to shed talent on a team that nobody thinks is good enough as is.

But how would this be any different if they had traded for Barnes? Or even saved and used the full TPE in the off-season? This was always going to be the scenario. And this is coming from someone who littered the trade threads with posts about not making any trades. The cost was 2 2nd round picks for half a season. I just don't see how Gordon or Barnes on the team is such a game changer in terms of convincing the owners to pay significant lux tax for that team.

The answer is Barnes and Gordon were on shorter term more cost controlled deals. Neither extended out past the end date of kemba's contract, which at least gave you a way to potentially generate a max spot at that time. Unless you can convince Fournier to only sign a two year deal that option vanishes. Also Gordon makes only 16 next year, its a VERY good bet Fournier will exceed that on the open market perhaps by quite a bit in a year with a lot of cap space and not many good free agents.

Also a player like Fournier who is like 6'5 and a mediocre at best defender is not an ideal positional. You already have two other plyers in Nesmith and Langford around that size. You needed a 6'8 swing3/4, it would have made your line ups make so much more sense so at least from that standpoint would have at least made more sense to resign if you went that option. Gordon and Barnes both would have been more useful in that they can at least close games for you, Fournier and Kemba are a hard combo to do that with.

[djFan71]

Masslive mentioned one other possibility, which is using the remaining $10 million TPE in a sign and trade for a free agent. Not much there - if you’re lucky you get Jamychal Green or Justise Winslow.

That might be really hard/impossible with the hard cap, I haven't checked and it depends on Fournier anyways.
But, that's basically MLE money anyways.

[darrendaye]

Acquiring another big that compliments rwIII or is better than him is next priority, has to feel like long term, no?

For me, ideally getting a center sized stretch 5 and a guy long but athletic enough to play alongside him and cover up his mistakes would be ideal in the short term. I'd have loved to grab Covington. Another good communicator out there with him and enough strength to push with centers on switches.

Also depends where you see Tatum's best fit, playing more at the 4 or 3. I know we're all about position-less ball now, but, I don't know that I like the matchup against Giannis, Durant, LeBron, or Simmons.

[MagicBagley18]

New team:

Kemba/Pritchard/Waters
Jaylen/Smart/Langford/Edwards
Fournier/Nesmith/Ojeleye
Tatum/GWill/Wagner
RWill/Thompson/Kornet/Tacko

Excited to see Rob with extended minutes and really him develop now the rest of the year. It’s the little things u gotta look forward to when u know we aren’t a banner team

[Slax]

Depends on cap and what he resigns for. 15 mill is probably too much for it too happen.

We can do 4/80m no problem.

So pay him more than he gets now?


Lets say we do.
Let say evan resigns for 20 mill a year.
Lets say we ship kemba for no salary past 202 summer
Lets say we keep out 1st rounders and use mle the next offseason
Lets say we let smart walk for nothing.

In summer of 2022 when we should be chasing beal we will have about 115 million in salaries.

Brown-30mill
tatum-32 million
Tpe player-10 mill
Rookies-5 mill
Nesmith/romeo/pp/grant/timelord- 17.5 mill
Fournier-20mill


And that is only 11 players.

Assuming your numbers are right, considering salary cap is projected under $116M in 2022, even without Fournier but keeping the TPE player and Nesmith/Romeo/PP/Grant/Timelord, we would still have less than $20M in cap room anyway which isn't anywhere near enough to get Beal even if he was willing to take a substantial paycut to come here (and I'm guessing he won't). Unless we dramatically shed almost everyone except Brown and Tatum and players on rookie and vet min contracts, I don't think there's any realistic way to get Beal directly in free agency in that 2022 offseason. We would probably need a trade of some sort where we have to send some salary out - either a sign-and-trade or Beal telling the Wizards he will opt out unless they trade him to us. Which, in that scenario, it might actually be good to have Kemba still on the books...

[FlatearthZorro]

New team:

Kemba/Pritchard/Waters
Jaylen/Smart/Langford/Edwards
Fournier/Nesmith/Ojeleye
Tatum/GWill/Wagner
RWill/Thompson/Kornet/Tacko

Hopefully the young guys get some burn, this season is a wash anyways, maybe the youngings can grow a little bit in the last part of it.

[Andrew McCeltic]

Masslive mentioned one other possibility, which is using the remaining $10 million TPE in a sign and trade for a free agent. Not much there - if you’re lucky you get Jamychal Green or Justise Winslow.

That might be really hard/impossible with the hard cap, I haven't checked and it depends on Fournier anyways.
But, that's basically MLE money anyways.

Doesn’t the hard cap go away when you roll over into next season?

Green has a player option, he’d have to want to leave Denver and take a 3 million dollar raise.

Winslow would have to take a pay cut from his current 13 million, he’s an unrestricted free agent and his shot has been atrocious since he came back from injury. He’s the best case scenario, Ojeleye goes to Memphis.

[djFan71]

Masslive mentioned one other possibility, which is using the remaining $10 million TPE in a sign and trade for a free agent. Not much there - if you’re lucky you get Jamychal Green or Justise Winslow.

That might be really hard/impossible with the hard cap, I haven't checked and it depends on Fournier anyways.
But, that's basically MLE money anyways.

Doesn’t the hard cap go away when you roll over into next season?

Green has a player option, he’d have to want to leave Denver and take a 3 million dollar raise.

Winslow would have to take a pay cut from his current 13 million, he’s an unrestricted free agent and his shot has been atrocious since he came back from injury. He’s the best case scenario, Ojeleye goes to Memphis.

It does, but if you're talking S&T, the team receiving the S&T player is hard-capped.

[Parliament10]

Regular Lineup:
Starters: Kemba - Brown - Fournier - Tatum - R.Williams
Rotation: Pritchard - Smart - Nesmith - Ojeleye - Thompson
Reserves: - Edwards - Langford - G.Williams - Wagner/Kornet
Two-Ways: Waters - Fall

Traded:
Theis
Teague
Green

[Andrew McCeltic]

Acquiring another big that compliments rwIII or is better than him is next priority, has to feel like long term, no?

For me, ideally getting a center sized stretch 5 and a guy long but athletic enough to play alongside him and cover up his mistakes would be ideal in the short term. I'd have loved to grab Covington. Another good communicator out there with him and enough strength to push with centers on switches.

Also depends where you see Tatum's best fit, playing more at the 4 or 3. I know we're all about position-less ball now, but, I don't know that I like the matchup against Giannis, Durant, LeBron, or Simmons.

What’s the path to get another big? Right now it’s hoping Wagner puts it all together and sticks around on a cheap contract past this season. Or you hit on a John Collins type late in the draft. Or Langford becomes a star and you trade him or Jaylen for a high upside 4. All very low probability events.

[bisme37]

I'm probably not going to get over this Theis thing for a while just to warn you guys.

[keevsnick1]

For all those wondering why people like @dangercart are claiming we are **** it's basically this:

If Fournier walks and tatum misses all nba we are less than 2 million below the tax next year for just twelve players.

So bringing back fournier as currently constituted is next to impossible unless you believe the c's are going 20 million into the tax. They are not.

So okay how do you fix that? You could dump kemba, but at roughly 75 million owed over two years that's an albatross. You are talking like two firsts just to move off the deal for the privilege of resigning fournier. You could dump tt but you'd need to replace him on the roster anyway since you need a decent backup due to robs health issues. You no longer have the financial flexibility via a large tpe to add a big wing which you still desperately need.

In short you are financially jammed up with no way out except to shed talent on a team that nobody thinks is good enough as is.

I don't see it the same at all. I'm not going to sit here and say our cap situation is "clean" or anything. But having avoided the tax this year and thus removed ANY AND ALL CONCERNS ABOUT REPEATER TAX RATES EVER KICKING IN BEFORE KEMBA'S DEAL EXPIRES, a point that I cannot stress enough, I do not see this big financial crunch.

NBA luxury tax is not crippling. Repeater tax rates are. We don't have to worry about that. I see no reason to believe that we're going to be pinching pennies in '21-22 or '22-23. Remember, in addition to the contracts we have on the books now, ownership was ok with Ainge offered Hayward a contract in the reported range of $25M/year before CHA came in over that. They were ok adding that much salary to the books we have now. Because a backloaded deal for Hayward would have still kept us below the tax line this year and thus removed any worry about repeater rates. Those have always been what's crippling, not regular tax. We are in the clear.

I just do not see significant financial crunch the next two years when it comes to adding role players. The issue is going to be if we want to trade for a star. Dipping below the cap to sign one outright is not practical when you crunch the numbers, even if Kemba had never been signed in the first place. The only path we have to acquiring another star is via trade and I just do not think we have the assets for that.

You arent thinking about this right. Look avoiding the repeater is nice, but if all the c's did was resign Fournier and make their draft pick they will be 20 million into the tax next year. Thats INTO the tax, not total payments, total overage + payments to be 20 million into the tax is 65 million dollars. In the current ownerships tenure they have never paid more than 30 million in salary/tax overages, that was the second finals year.

JUST to bring back Fournier will require a tax commitment they have literally never made, even when they were in the finals. Thats for a team that before the Fournier addition was 21-23. And that will require locking into a significant commitment to Fournier that locks you into that level for at least two years and likely eats up any cap space you may have after kemba but before jaylen/jayson expire.

In other words what I'm saying is you're too focused on just the tax line, yes they can't really get out of it next year (unless they pay to dump Kemba). But theres a big difference between being a little over, and 20 million over. ITS A LOT OF MONEY. And its not our money, but we have no reason to believe Wyc will spend it.

And look if the answer is "Let Fournier walk" then fine. But then you're back to where you were before this year only now down 2 more total second round picks and with only an 11 million dollar tpe.

So ya, I guess the point is they were in a tough spot before this deal. It's even tough now.

[zoyathedestroya]

Looking forward to the Fournier + Wagner vs. Myles Turner + Theis debates the rest of the season.

[reload141]

I'm happy we didn't get Gordon.

Like, really happy.